Are Pentax compact digitals really that bad?

[Peter Smekal]

Hi folks,
I've been thinking about buying a small pocket digital camera for those
situations when a DSLR is too inconvenient. As old pentaxian (ME-sup, LX,
Pz-1p, *istD) I would of course rather go for a Pentax, but the reviews
(dpreview, imaging-resource, steves digocams, etc) mostly grade Pentax
Optios far behind the Canons, Sonys, Fujis Finepix' etc. espcecially when
it comes to image quality. Is it really that bad? Any experience from ...
let's say the new Optio S5z? It looks nice, is small enough for a shirt
pocket, but what about image quality? Thanks for any advice!
Peter, Sweden